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AMERICA  TO-DAY 


REPRINTED  FROM 

tlbe  2>aU\>  telegraph 

LONDON,  ENGLAND 
September  9TH,  1901 


m 

m : 


THE  LEAGUE  OF  ASSOCIATED  ENGINEERS 
NEW  YORK,  N.  Y. 


TiiniTn  u ri  D ah, 


J .'••••  Vf.  ix>* 


4 


J 


September  27th,  1901. 


•** 


The  League  of  ^Associated  Engineers , after  accomplish- 

K 

ing  the  object  for  which  it  was  formed , finds  it  still  has  a 
small  balance  of  money  in  its  treasury , and  it  has  been 
thought  well  to  use  this  to  place  in  the  hands  of  the  subscribers 
to  this  fund , a copy  of  an  article  published  in  the  London 
“TDaily  Telegraph”  of  Sept.  9th,  1901 , which  will  interest 
American  readers , particularly  e American  Engineers. 

It  will  be  noted  that  the  writer  uses  the  English  language 
- with  consummate  skill  and  fearless  vigor:  for  these  reasons 
5 and  its  prospective  historic  value , it  is  worthy  of  a place  in 
^pur  libraries. 

It  is  believed  that  a large  majority  of  ^American  readers 
will  accept  his  conclusions , admiring  his  candor  and  courage. 

STEPHEN  IV.  BALD  IVIN, 


p 1079 D 


Chairman. 


* 


FROM 


Zhc  XTeleotapb 

LONDON,  ENGLAND 

September  9TH,  1901 


AMERICA  TO=DAY 

UNIVERSAL  COMPETITOR.  A CONTINENT’S 
COMING  OF  AGE.  POLICY  OF 
THE  FUTURE 


It  is  at  moments  of  dramatic  accident  and  coincidence  that 
national  processes  are  apt  to  work  suddenly  to  sight,  as  a blow 
in  the  dark  might  strike  an  electric  button  and  switch  on  the 
full  dazzle  of  the  bulb.  Whatever  the  issue  to  the  life  of  the 
victim,  whether  happy  or  sinister,  the  attempted  assassination 
of  Mr.  McKinley  has  taken  place  at  an  instant  and  under  cir- 
cumstances which  must  leave  a deep  mark  upon  the  destinies  of 
America,  by  influencing  the  temperament  of  the  most  impres- 
sionable and  imaginative  people  in  the  world.  We  must  not 
allow  the  crime  to  obscure  what  had  happened  immediately 
before.  Upon  the  previous  day  the  President,  who  is  a most 
sonorous  and  powerful  speaker,  when  warmed  to  a serious  glow 
by  the  rising  earnestness  of  his  argument,  had  made  what  was 
recognized  at  once  as  the  most  remarkable  speech  of  his  life. 


1 


In  the  United  States  it  was  the  most  admired.  For  the  remain- 
der of  the  world  it  was  incomparably  the  most  significant.  Had 
the  outrage  not  occurred  within  twenty-four  hours  of  its  deliv- 
ery the  Press  of  every  country  would  have  been  full  of  it.  The 
occasion  was  the  Pan-American  Exhibition  at  Buffalo,  in  itself 
a moral  assertion  of  the  political  and  economic  supremacy  of 
“Republican  Imperialism”  over  the  double  continent.  The 
scene  was  an  open  stand,  from  which  a vast  audience  was  ad- 
dressed by  their  Chief  Citizen,  with  no  ribbon,  jewel,  or  epaul- 
ettes to  indicate  that  he  was  one  of  the  four  greatest  among  the 
rulers  of  the  earth.  But  what  were  the  accents  ? Mr.  McKin- 
ley announced  that  the  “period  of  exclusiveness  was  passed”; 
that  the  prohibitive  system,  having  served  its  purpose,  must  be 
laid  aside;  and  that  a policy  of  lower  tariffs  must  be  adopted  to 
increase  the  competitive  power  of  America. 

It  has  long  been  the  conviction  of  every  far-sighted  econo- 
mist that  the  real  force  of  transatlantic  rivalry  in  trade  would 
never  be  known  until  the  United  States  had  begun  to  remove 
the  obstacles  placed  by  high  Protection  in  the  way  of  exchange. 
Such  a change  will  mean  an  increase  in  the  volume  of  her  com- 
merce both  ways,  and  the  completion  of  her  gigantic  business 
apparatus  by  the  revival  of  her  shipping.  Reciprocity  is  advo- 
cated, as  exclusiveness  was  maintained,  not  upon  grounds  of 
principle,  but  upon  those  of  expediency.  It  is  a different  method, 
admirably  designed,  to  promote  still  more  effectually  the  former 
purposes,  and  it  means  the  real  beginning  of  the  struggle  for 
that  industrial,  commercial,  and  financial  primacy  of  the  world 
which  America  seems  marked  out  to  attain.  The  logic  of 
protection  involves  the  rejection  of  foreign  trade  to  preserve 
an  internal  monopoly.  When  supremacy  in  international  com- 
merce has  become  an  object,  the  maintenance  of  exclusive 


2 


tariffs  becomes  injurious  and  absurd.  It  is  like  nothing  so  much 
as  the  process  by  which  case-armour  in  the  middle  ages  was 
increased  in  weight  until  it  disqualified  the  combatant,  so  that 
churls  and  peasants  came  up  with  unknightly  weapons  when 
splendid  signiors  were  once  unhorsed,  and  hewed  them  to  pieces 
like  logs  as  they  lay  prone  under  their  harness.  In  the  Buffalo 
speech,  Mr.  McKinley  practically  declared  what  has  previously 
been  known  as  McKinleyism  to  be  as  obsolete  as  plate-armour. 
Unfettered  and  fully  equipped  America,  under  a lower  tariff 
system,  will  be  a more  formidible  antagonist  than  before,  when 
she  has  shaken  herself  free  of  some  defensive  encumbrances  and 
committed  herself  to  the  strategical  offensive  which  for  decisive 
purposes  is  no  less  indispensable  in  commerce  than  in 
war. 

The  President  had  long  been  known  to  entertain  the  views 
to  which  he  committed  himself  at  the  Pan-American  Exhibition 
with  unexpected  emphasis  and  finality.  These  opinions  would, 
in  any  case,  have  commanded  the  support  of  the  overwhelming 
majority  of  the  American  people.  It  is  obvious  that  the  crime, 
which  has  sinced  occurred,  can  only  add  enormously  to  the  in- 
fluence of  the  orator  at  Buffalo,  and  must  ensure  the  historical 
effect  of  that  utterance.  If  Mr.  McKinley  had  been  mortally 
wounded,  his  words  would  have  been  regarded  as  a national 
legacy,  and  Mr.  Roosevelt  would  have  become  their  resolute 
executor.  If  the  President  should  happily  survive,  his  power  to 
carry  out  his  own  views  will  be  irresistible.  He  was  already, 
in  the  opinion  of  many  shrewd  and  unbiased  judges,  the  most 
popular  Chief  Magistrate  without  exception  who  has  ever 
occupied  the  White  House.  He  has  absolutely  disclaimed  all 
thought  of  a third  term  of  office.  He  can  act  as  the  chief  of  the 
nation  without  regard  to  party  caucuses  or  sectional  interests. 


His  recovery  from  the  outrage  of  which  he  has  been  the  victim 
would  invest  him  for  the  remainder  of  his  term  of  office  with  a 
moral  force  against  which  no  opposition  in  America  could  stand. 
Whichever  way  we  look  at  it,  it  is  clear  that  Mr.  McKinley’s 
Buffalo  programme  has  been  formulated  under  circumstances 
that  makes  its  fulfilment  inevitable  within  the  easily  measurable 
future.  The  United  States,  in  a word,  have  fairly  entered  upon 
the  new  phase.  They  have  passed  through  their  experimental 
period  and  attained  their  majority.  Their  gristle  has  become 
bone.  There  can  no  longer  be  a tacit  separation  of  hemispheres 
in  our  conceptions  of  politics  and  commerce.  The  terms  “ New 
World  ” and  “ Old  World  ” have  lost  their  traditional  meaning. 
With  the  awakening  of  Japan,  the  transformation  of  Germany, 
and  the  less  obvious,  but  not  less  real,  revolution  that  is  going 
on  in  this  country  under  democratic  influences,  the  Old  World 
has  become  rejuvenated  as  the  New  World  has  become  mature. 
The  former  fact  is  as  important  for  America  as  is  the  other  for 
ourselves.  America,  Britain,  France,  Germany,  Russia — all  the 
Greater  Powers  are  henceforth  World-Powers,  and  their  interests 
are  woven  together  in  the  mesh  that  envelopes  the  globe.  All 
great  conceptions  in  trade  and  politics  henceforth  must  regard 
the  round  earth  and  the  fullness  thereof  as  a whole.  This  must 
become  more  and  more  the  dominating  twentieth  century  con- 
ception, never  more  distinctly  formulated  in  effect,  if  not  in 
intention,  than  by  the  speech  in  which  Mr.  McKinley  declared 
upon  the  eve  of  his  attempted  assassination  that  “ the  period  of 
exclusiveness  is  passed.” 

What  we  have  to  realise  is  that  we  have  received  the  answer 
to  an  historic  question.  From  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
up  to  yesterday  the  imagination  of  the  Old  World  was  accus- 
tomed to  ask  itself  what  America  might  mean,  without  arriving 


4 


at  any  assurance  of  a definite  reply.  Opinions  might  be  pessi- 
mistic or  sanguine,  but  were  always  prophetic  and  problematical. 
The  New  World  was  regarded  as  a region  apart,  and  the  return 
of  its  influence  with  overwhelming  force  upon  the  destinies  of 
the  Old  World,  though  the  most  momentous  of  all  the  con- 
tingencies, was  practically  never  considered.  We  know  at  last, 
as  a matter  of  actual  experience  not  of  vague  speculation,  what 
America  is  going  to  mean,  and  it  is  apparent  that  the  real 
meaning  is  widely  different  from  anything  that  was  generally 
expected  upon  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  All  Europe  is  now 
beginning  to  regard  the  United  States  with  something  like  the 
same  feeling  of  uneasy  apprehension  and  vague  disquiet  which 
has  been  created  in  this  country  by  the  commercial  pressure  of 
Germany.  This  is  a light  in  which  the  subject  was  not  regarded 
beforehand.  The  rulers  of  the  Continent  looked  upon  the 
Republic  as  if  it  were  something  in  a permanent  state  of  political 
quarantine,  fortunately  prevented  by  isolation  from  disseminating 
democratic  germs.  Their  peoples  regarded  America  as  a 
Promised  Land  in  which  men  might  escape  for  ever  from  all 
association  with  the  life  of  Europe.  In  this  country  average 
opinion  thought  of  the  United  States  as  the  farmyard  of  the 
world,  supplying  an  industrial  island  with  foodstuffs  and  raw 
material,  but  as  providentially  distinguished  from  a manufacturing 
society  like  our  own  as  is  the  country  from  the  town.  It  was 
agreed  that  the  latent  resources  of  the  United  States  were  in- 
exhaustible in  variety  and  extent.  The  immense  increase  in  the 
American  population  was  the  continual  theme  of  interest  and 
speculation.  Everyone  assumed  that  some  destiny  of  a more  or 
less  vague,  remote,  and  purely  Transatlantic  character  must  lie 
before  the  Republic.  Sooner  or  later  it  was  to  mean  either  the 
unparalleled  triumph  or  the  colossal  failure  of  democracy.  The 


5 


pessimists  pointed  to  Tammany,  polyglot  slums,  the  chaos  of 
racial  elements  and  mortgaged  farms.  The  advocates  of  America 
looked  from  the  White  House  to  the  wheat  harvests,  and  from 
the  Supreme  Court  to  the  spirit  of  national  greatness  that,  in 
spite  of  all  its  unbridled  vigour  and  vitality,  had  maintained  a 
democratic  society  upon  a basis  of  fundamental  law,  and  had 
saved  the  Union  in  the  bloodiest  struggle  ever  waged  to  vindicate 
the  integrity  of  a State.  But,  whatever  view  was  taken,  the 
American  experiment  in  civilisation  was  regarded  as  if  it  could 
have  no  more  direct  influence  upon  the  political  and  commercial 
fortunes  of  the  Old  World  than  the  tests  going  on  in  a chemical 
laboratory  can  have  upon  the  interests  of  the  passers-by  outside 
the  windows. 

There  has  been  as  complete  a transformation  of  that  philo- 
sophic attitude  as  would  occur  in  the  curious  minds  of  the  visi- 
tors to  the  Zoological  Gardens  if  the  animals  suddenly  showed 
signs  of  breaking  loose  from  their  cages.  The  alarmed  pertur- 
bation excited  by  the  Billion  Dollar  Trust  has  superseded  the 
abstract  speculation  suggested  by  the  pages  of  De  Tocqueville. 
We  are  no  longer  engaged  in  wondering  what  America  may 
mean  for  the  Americans.  We  are  sufficiently  pre-occupied  with 
fears  of  what  it  may  mean  for  ourselves.  In  the  prospects  of 
the  people  of  the  United  States,  indeed,  there  appears  at  the 
present  moment  to  be  wonderfully  little  cause  for  immediate 
anxiety.  They  are  citizens  of  a country  which  has  attained  the 
highest  level  of  average  prosperity  that  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
Their  commercial  strength  is  more  invulnerable  at  home  and 
more  irresistible  abroad  than  that  of  any  other  nation.  They 
have  greater  opportunities  and  fewer  burdens  head  for  head  than 
have  Englishmen  or  Germans.  No  external  enemy  can  ever 
break  the  mainsprings  of  their  power  or  their  trade.  They  have 


6 


indefinite  room  to  multiply  within  their  own  frontiers,  and  in- 
crease of  total  population  may  go  hand  in  hand  for  many  years 
with  enhancement  of  individual  comfort.  The  heterogeneous 
medley  of  races  does  not  appear  in  the  governing  elements  of 
the  nation.  All  the  men  at  the  top,  no  matter  what  may  be 
their  origin,  strike  the  observer  a$  being  real  Americans  of  the 
characteristic  stamp  ; and  when  a mixed  society  has  developed 
the  power  that  this  fact  implies  of  absorbing  all  leading  and 
directing  personalities  into  an  organic  and  controlling  system, 
there  need  be  no  fear  for  the  ultimate  solidity  of  American  civ- 
ilisation. For  internal  purposes  the  outlook  before  the  United 
States  is  brighter  than  the  prospects  in  front  of  any  other  peo- 
ple. The  average  human  lot  upon  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic 
is  not  radically  different  from  the  same  thing  on  this  side,  as  the 
philosophers  once  thought  it  was  bound  to  be  in  one  shape  or 
another.  It  is  not  so  much  different  as  better.  Where  the 
United  States  is  developing  the  difference  is  precisely  in  its  re- 
turn effect  upon  Europe  as  a whole,  and  for  the  purposes  of  the 
world  in  general  the  question  of  the  nineteenth  century:  “ What 
will  America  mean  ? ” is  answered  at  the  commencement  of  the 
twentieth  by  all  that  is  represented  by  the  Billion  Dollar  Trust, 
the  Republican-Imperialism  associated  with  the  career  of  Mr. 
McKinley,  and  the  conviction  reflected  in  his  Buffalo  speech 
that  the  mission  of  America  is  to  achieve  the  trade  supremacy 
of  the  world.  It  is  in  her  tremendous  equipment  for  this  enter- 
prise that  America  appears  as  a wholly  unprecedented  phenom- 
enon in  the  history  of  commerce.  England  carried  industrial 
and  mercantile  organisation  to  an  incomparably  higher  stage  of 
efficiency  than  any  of  her  predecessors  in  commercial  pre.-emi- 
nence.  Before  the  rise  of  British  sea-power,  colonisation,  and 
manufacture,  all  mercantile  power  had  been  essentially  .a  dis- 


; 


tributing  rather  than  a producing  agency.  The  Phoenicians,  the 
Venetians,  the  Hanseatic  League,  the  Dutch  were  middlemen  ; 
the  Spaniards,  in  their  day  of  universal  empire,  were  splendid 
parasites.  The  sea  traffic  of  the  latter  was  the  long  transport  of 
a dazzling  plunder.  All  the  others  were  more  or  less  brokers 
and  carriers,  playing  a legitimate  part  in  controlling  the  great 
trade  routes  and  managing  the  business  of  exchange  which  could 
not  have  been  carried  on  by  any  other  process. 

y Our  Mediterranean,  Hanseatic,  and  Dutch  predecessors 
kept  the  warehouses  of  the  world  before  us.  England  gave  the 
first  example  of  commercial  supremacy  dependent  not  merely 
upon  distributing  agency,  but  upon  an  immense  internal  pro- 
ducing power,  and  became  both  the  great  warehouse  and  the 
great  workshop  of  the  world.  Our  coal  and  iron,  our  insular 
security  and  ideal  facilities  for  both  manufacture  and  shipment, 
gave  us  the  same  overwhelming  advantage  by  comparison  with 
the  rest  of  the  world  that  America  now  possesses  over  all  rivals, 
including  ourselves.  But  America  has  all  the  resources  required 
for  enabling  her  to  excel  our  own  example,  previously  unique, 
of  the  establishment  of  commercial  predominance  upon  producing 
power  rather  than  upon  distributive  functions.  Our  monopoly 
depended  not  upon  any  really  essential  and  permanent  singu- 
larity in  our  intrinsic  advantages,  but  upon  the  fact  that  we  had 
brought  our  production  to  a high  pitch  of  development  long  be- 
fore others  were  enabled  to  make  use  of  resources  not  dissimilar 
in  kind  from  our  own,  though,  for  the  most  part,  inferior  in  de- 
gree. Our  whole  position  was  determined  from  the  first,  as  it 
still  is,  by  the  external  attribute  of  sea  power.  Without  that  we 
should  have  lacked,  from  the  outset,  the  raw  material  for  our 
textile  trades,  and  modern  Lancashire  would  never  have  come 
into  existence.  To  lose  it  now  would  mean  the  stopping  of  our 


8 


mills  and  the  starving  of  our  people.  But  America  depends 
upon  no  external  attribute,  not  even  upon  the  magnificent  assist- 
ance of  sea-power.  For  the  first  time,  the  bid  for  commercial 
supremacy  is  made  by  a semi-continent  which  is  more  com- 
pletely self-contained  in  an  economic  sense  than  any  society 
ever  before  seen.  At  our  present  stage  we  are  compelled  to 
import  our  food,  our  ore,  our  raw  cotton.  To  be  cut  off  from 
our  sources  of  supply  in  these  respects  would  mean  ruin.  But 
while  America  can  become  far  richer  and  more  powerful  with  a 
great  foreign  trade  than  without  it,  and,  therefore,  concentrates 
her  whole  ambition  upon  obtaining  it,  foreign  trade  is  not,  and 
never  can  be,  the  matter  of  life  and  death  to  her  that  it  is  to  us. 
She  can  dispense  with  the  world  in  case  of  absolute  need.  She 
is  the  greatest  producer  of  food  and  raw  material,  as  well  as  the 
possessor  of  the  most  efficient  manufacturing  apparatus,  the  most 
consummate  organising  ability,  the  most  numerous  and  ener- 
getic population,  among  all  commercial  States.  Her  political 
security  is  even  more  complete  than  ours  ever  was.  There  is 
not  a single  factor  of  economic  activity  in  which  she  may  not 
reasonably  expect  to  excel  any  rival. 

Russian  or  Chinese  emulation  are  possibilities,  but  of  the 
twenty-first  century,  not  of  the  twentieth.  In  the  meantime 
this  little  island,  for  all  the  intensity  of  life  within  it,  is,  after  all, 
by  comparison,  but  a territorial  speck  upon  the  wide  face  of  the 
earth.  Germany  has  a poor  soil,  one  of  the  poorest  seaboards 
in  the  world,  a dangerous  strategical  position,  an  immature  po- 
litical development.  Her  intrinsic  material  resources,  taken  all 
in  all,  are  less  than  ours,  and  she  neither  has  now,  nor  ever  can 
have,  the  control  of  the  sea,  which  has  made  us  secure  of  all  the 
external  supplies  we  required.  This  is  the  point  at  which  we 
realise  the  portentous  character  of  the  American  position.  The 


9 


United  States  is  the  only  nation  which  has  ever  comprised  within 
the  frontiers  of  one  compact,  uninterrupted  territory  all  the  mate- 
rial and  moral  elements  of  commercial  supremacy.  America 
became,  in  the  first  place,  the  principal  agricultural  country — 
the  granary  of  the  globe.  In  this  respect  no  single  State  could 
hope  to  compete  with  her.  With  the  next  step  she  obtained  the 
lead  in  iron  and  a vast  superiority  in  the  make  of  steel.  These 
are  the  key-industries  of  all  modern  productions,  and  with  respect 
to  them  America  is  as  completely  beyond  rivalry  by  any  one  com- 
petitor as  in  the  growth  of  wheat.  What  will  be  the  next  step  ? 
That  is  not  hard  to  forecast.  The  United  States  will  manufacture 
more  and  more  of  its  own  raw  cotton,  and  at  the  present  rate  at 
which  mills  are  being  established,  especially  in  the  cotton-growing 
South  itself,  the  lead  must  be  taken  by  the  Republic  in  textiles 
as  certainly  as  in  corn  and  metals.  The  sphere  of  shipbuilding 
will  remain  as  the  final  world  to  conquer.  “ We  have  an  inade- 
quate steamship  service,”  declared  President  McKinley  at  Buf- 
falo. “There  should  be  direct  lines  from  the  esatern  coast  of 
the  United  States  to  South  America.  One  of  the  needs  of  the 
time  is  direct  commercial  lines  to  fields  of  consumption  we  have 
barely  touched.  We  must  encourage  our  merchant  marine.  We 
must  have  more  ships  under  the  American  flag,  built,  manned, 
and  owned  by  Americans.”  This  energetic  pronouncement 
points  to  the  enterprise  upon  which  America  means  to  concen- 
trate her  effort.  There  is  no  intrinsic  reason  why  the  secret  of 
success  should  fail  her  at  this  point.  The  United  States  can  of 
course  build  ships,  apart  from  the  element  of  cost,  as  well  as  we 
can.  At  no  very  distant  date  it  will  build  them  as  cheaply. 
The  Subsidies  Bill,  which  is  the  main  item  in  the  Buffalo  pro- 
gramme, next  to  reciprocity  treaties,  will  do  the  rest.  England 
will  probably  retain  her  ascendency  in  shipbuilding  and  ocean 


io 


transport  even  longer  than  in  textiles,  though  tolerably  certain 
to  offer  a more  tenacious  and  efficient  resistance  even  in  the  lat- 
ter respect  than  the  sanguine  majority  in  America  expects. 
But,  when  the  challenge  to  our  mercantile  supremacy  takes  a 
really  serious  form,  it  will  come  from  America,  and  cannot  come 
from  any  other  quarter.  The  industrial  power  of  the  United 
States,  let  us  repeat  it,  depends  upon  a capacity  for  universal 
and  unlimited  production  within  a self-contained  area.  This  is 
the  unexampled  prodigy  in  the  records  of  the  world’s  commerce, 
and  this  rather  than  anything  anticipated  by  the  philosophers  of 
politics  and  the  speculators  upon  the  internal  prospects  of  Re- 
publican democracy  is  the  distinctive  and  formidable  meaning 
which  modern  America  has  revealed. 

Upon  a closer  analysis  of  primary  impressions  it  is  more 
than  questionable  whether  the  average  Briton  has  even  yet  any 
sure  and  vivid  conception  of  the  overwhelming  character  of 
America’s  natural  resources  as  compared  with  any  European 
scale.  The  Republic  is  thirty  times  as  large  as  our  own  island. 
Every  factor  in  her  industrial  greatness  is  on  the  giant  measure 
either  of  performance  or  potentiality.  She  has  two  long  fronts 
upon  the  two  main  oceans.  Her  navigable  waterways  are  more 
wonderful  than  those  of  Siberia  or  Brazil,  for  they  do  not  flow 
towards  ice  like  the  one  or  through  the  dense  tropics  like  the  other. 
Nor  is  there  anything  in  the  Tsar’s  Asiatic  dominion  to  compare 
with  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  great  lakes  leading  ocean  traffic 
for  two  thousand  miles  into  the  heart  of  a continent.  Her  har- 
vests are  a sea  of  golden  grain,  stretching  over  many  times  the 
entire  area  of  the  British  Islands.  The  American  farmer  has 
marketed,  at  nearly  forty  cents  a bushel  in  recent  seasons,  corn 
which  it  cost  him  fifteen  cents  to  produce.  The  United  States 
raises  nearly  two-thirds  of  the  raw  cotton  of  the  world.  Sugar 


is  raised  from  the  cane  in  the  south,  from  the  beet  in  the  far 
west,  from  sorghum  in  the  centre,  from  the  maple  in  New  Eng- 
land. California  is  opulent  with  orchards.  The  immense  mineral 
deposits  of  America  are  still  won  in  great  part  near  the  surface, 
not  by  deep  shafts,  long  drifts,  and  the  expensive  workings  of 
older  mining  countries  like  our  own.  The  coal  area  of  the  United 
States  is  far  wider  than  that  of  all  Europe  put  together,  and  is 
only  equalled  by  the  vast  seams  of  China.  “ If  a man  have  better 
iron  than  you,”  said  the  sage,  “he  shall  have  all  your  gold.”  But 
America  is  now  first  both  in  gold  and  iron,  and  produces  all  the 
metals  but  tin.  Her  huge  petroleum  output  hardly  comes 
behind  that  of  Russia.  Her  herds  of  horses,  cattle,  sheep,  pigs, 
are  such  as  the  pastoral  imagination  of  the  more  primitive 
world  might  have  seen  in  dreams.  Her  waters  swarm  with  fish. 
And  while  there  are  already  seventy-six  million  inhabitants  in 
America  there  is  still  sixteen  times  as  much  space  to  every  soul 
as  in  this  crowded  island,  and  twelve  times  as  much  as  in 
Germany. 

But  limited  as  are  by  comparison  our  means  for  the  main- 
tenance of  our  commercial  supremacy,  we  are  notoriously  more 
wasteful  of  them  than  either  of  our  chief  rivals.  The  significance 
of  the  American  industrial  method  lies  precisely  in  the  scrupu- 
lous economy  with  which  she  exploits  her  unparalleled  abundance 
of  material.  Brains,  capital,  and  labor  have  been  described  by 
Mr.  Carnegie  as  the  co-equal  supports  of  the  industrial  three-- 
legged  stool.  The  small  investor  and  the  isolated  employer 
are  as  typical  of  English  economic  organisation  as  are  the  multi- 
millionaire and  mammoth  trusts  of  American.  As  regards 
ability  and  driving  power,  no  one  is  afraid  of  youth  across  the 
Atlantic,  and  everyone  is  open  to  ideas.  Mr.  Carnegie  himself 
set  the  example  of  that  vigilant  search  for  brains,  without  which 


12 


the  trust  system  could  not  be  carried  on.  Boldness  and  fertility 
of  mind  are  valued  as  the  vital  gifts,  and  the  merely  safe  quali- 
ties of  the  British  business  ideal  are  of  small  account.  Nothing 
astonishes  English  observers  visiting  America  for  the  first  time 
at  a late  period  of  life,  than  to  observe  the  youth  of  the  men 
who  are  found  on  every  side  in  positions  of  grave  responsibility, 
at  an  age  when,  according  to  insular  traditions,  they  should  just 
be  shedding  their  commercial  long-clothes.  Energy,  energy, 
energy,  more  strenuous  and  sustained  than  anything  to  which 
the  old  world  is  accustomed — that  is  the  mark  of  each  factor  in 
Mr.  Carnegie’s  triple  alliance — of  brains,  capital,  and  labor 
alike.  There  is  something  in  American  air  which  imparts  the 
unmistakable  quickening  quality  to  the  British  emigrant  when  he 
becomes  domiciled  across  the  Atlantic.  The  change  of  climate 
and  the  mixture  of  blood  have  combined  to  make  laborers  in  the 
United  States  more  active  in  body  and  mind  than  the  workers 
of  any  other  nation. 

It  will  be  enough  to  quote  two  remarkable  instances  of  the 
methods  by  which  a vigorous  circulation  of  intelligence  is  main- 
tained as  the  very  life  current  of  American  industry.  Several 
years  ago  M.  Paul  Bourget  noticed,  in  his  admirable  book,  the 
frequency  with  which  men  who  were  still  among  the  rank  and 
file  of  labour  in  large  American  establishments  had  been  pointed 
out  to  him  as  the  originators  of  ingenious  appliances  in  the 
works  to  which  they  belonged.  In  this  connection  it  is  sur- 
prising that  attention  is  rarely,  if  ever,  drawn,  on  this  side  of 
the  Atlantic,  to  the  system  of  workmen’s  prizes  adopted  by 
many  great  Transatlantic  companies.  Prizes  are  regularly 
offered  for  all  proposals  made  by  the  employes  for  the  improve- 
ment or  simplification  of  processes.  A special  letter-box  is  put 
up  to  act  as  the  lion’s  mouth  of  the  factory.  Into  it  may  be 


13 


dropped  any  expression  of  opinion,  sketch  of  a mechanical 
device,  or  what  not.  The  communications  are  unsigned  by  the 
authors,  but  are  distinguished  by  a private  mark.  At  regular 
intervals  the  contents  of  this  receptacle  are  cleared  out  and 
thoroughly  examined  by  a committee  representing  all  the 
departments.  When  the  selection  of  useful  suggestions  is  made 
and  the  rewards  allotted,  the  names  of  the  successful  competi- 
tors are  published  and  brought  to  the  knowledge  of  their  com- 
rades throughout  the  establishment.  It  seems  to  be  conceded 
that  this  method  has  brought  many  practical  ideas  into  use, 
and  it  would  be  hard  to  quote  a more  characteristic  instance  of 
the  American  spirit.  Every  private  in  the  industrial  army  of 
the  United  States  may  be  said  to  carry  his  marshal’s  baton  in 
his  knapsack.  “I  think,”  says  Mr.  Schwab,  “that  there  never 
was  a greater  opportunity  for  any  man,  workingman  or  man- 
ager, who  has  to  use  his  brains  than  to-day.  Never  has  there 
been  such  a scarcity  of  the  special  men  that  great  manufactur- 
ing concerns  and  capitalists  desire.” 

The  process  of  searching  out  ability  and  sifting  out  ideas 
goes  on  from  top  to  bottom.  The  well-known  “ lunch  con- 
ferences ” play  the  part  among  the  works  managers  and  depart- 
mental heads  of  some  some  great  firms  in  the  Steel  Trust 
that  the  lion’s  mouth  does  among  the  workmen  elsewhere.  The 
“lunch  conferences”  were  started  by  the  Carnegie  Company, 
and  have  been  found  worthy  of  imitation.  The  assembly  takes 
place  on  a fixed  date  every  month  under  the  chairmanship  of 
the  president  of  the  company,  and  the  lunch  is  of  a character  to 
draw  out  all  that  is  best  in  human  nature.  While  the  famous 
dinner  with  which  Lord  Rosebery  settled  the  coal  strike  was  a 
masterly  episode,  the  lunch  conferences  area  regular  institution, 
upon  the  same  invaluable  principle.  The  debate  is  opened  over 


the  coffee  and  liqueurs,  when  every  point  of  interest  arising  in 
connection  with  the  previous  month’s  business  is  canvassed  in 
the  genial  and  merciless  system  of  mutual  cross-examination. 
Directing  vigour,  restless  inventiveness  are  the  qualities  to 
which,  next  to  the  wealth  of  her  natural  resources,  America 
owes  her  industrial  progress. 

NOTE — As  to  why  conditions  are  as  stated  : The  subscriber  personally 
believes  that  one  of  the  most  potent  causes  is  that  the  founders  of  our  govern- 
ment had  the  wisdom  and  courage  to  declare  that  “all  men  are  born  free  and 
equal  ” (before  the  law),  thus  obliterating  class  distinction,  removing  the  bar- 
riers that  under  European  conditions  militate  against  progress,  securing  to 
Americans  a freedom  of  thought  and  action,  and  stimulating  and  encouraging 
the  individual  to  energetic  and  hopeful  work  to  better  his  condition,  however 
humble  may  be  his  beginnings.  STEPHEN  W.  BALDWIN. 

The  Hon.  Carroll  Wright,  the  United  States  Commissioner 
of  Labour,  points  out  that,  just  as  America  makes  the  most 
economical  use  of  the  largest  resources,  she  multiplies  the  pro- 
ductive power  of  her  population  by  the  employment  of  machine 
industry  in  a higher  ratio  than  countries  like  England  and  Ger- 
many, already  handicapped  by  their  inferiority  in  the  number 
of  their  manual  workers.  Where  a thousand  paper  bags  could 
be  made  by  hand  in  six  hours  and  a half,  they  are  now  made  by 
the  machine  in  forty  minutes.  It  took  4,800  hours  to  rule  on 
both  sides  ten  reams  of  paper ; with  the  tool  one  man  can  do  it 
all  in  two  and  a half  hours.  Another  invention  shells  corn 
a hundred  times  as  fast  as  by  hand.  The  mechanical  mower 
gets  through  seven  times  as  much  grass  in  the  same  time  as  the 
man  with  the  scythe.  “ An  ordinary  farm  hand  in  the  United 
States,”  pursues  Mr.  Wright,  “ raises  as  much  grain  as  three  in 
England,  four  in  France,  five  in  Germany,  or  six  in  Austria, 
which  shows  what  an  enormous  waste  of  labour  occurs  in 
Europe,  largely  because  the  farmers  are  not  possessed  of  the 
mechanical  appliances  used  in  the  United  States.”  This  subject 


15 


is,  perhaps,  so  familiar  that  it  is  unnecessary  to  pile  fact  upon 
factwith  regard  to  it.  If  we  pick  up  the  report  from  our  Consul 
at  Philadelphia,  published  the  other  day,  we  find  notice  of  such 
novel  devices  as  a new  refrigerator  for  enabling  every  house- 
holder to  make  his  ice  on  his  own  premises  ; of  the  telephone  call- 
meter,  which  keeps  an  automatic  register  of  all  calls  made,  so 
that  both  subscriber  and  company  always  know  how  they  stand, 
and  can  rely  upon  the  accuracy  of  the  record;  while  another 
device  in  the  list  of  novelties  enables  wafer  biscuits  to  be  turned 
out  at  one-third  greater  speed  than  before  ; and  we  are  also 
told  thatthe  automatic  stoker  is  rapidly  superseding  the  fireman. 
“ Wherever  machinery  can  be  made  to  do  man’s  work,”  said  a 
recent  Transatlantic  expert,  “the  instinct  of  the  American  is  to 
devise  some  means  to  bring  the  substitution  about.”  It  is 
equally  the  instinct  of  the  American  to  replace  a machine,  no 
matter  how  expensive,  how  efficient,  or  how  new,  by  a better  as 
soon  as  a better  is  produced.  The  best  of  yesterday  goes  to  the 
scrap  heap  if  it  is  the  second-rate  of  to-day. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  trust  system,  with  its  minute  speciali- 
sation, massed  output,  and  continuous  running,  s the  natural  and 
necessary  result  of  such  conditions  as  these.  Trusts  are  super- 
seding isolated  establishments  as  inevitably  as  the  modern  fac- 
tory displaced  cottage  handicraft.  If  economy  of  production 
were  not  the  fundamental  effect  of  the  great  combinations  they 
could  not  survive.  A vast  quantity  of  angry  rhetoric  expended 
upon  the  subject  of  trusts  recalls  Cardinal  Newman’s  phrase 
about  “ reckless  assertion  based  on  groundless  assumption.” 
Those  who  accuse  trusts  of  oppressing  labour  and  inflating  prices 
can  never  have  compared  their  ideas  with  the  facts.  The  wages 
paid  by  the  consolidations  are  on  the  whole  upon  the  highest 
scale  of  remuneration  current  in  America.  The  trusts  may 


16 


have  held  up  prices  which  would  otherwise  have  fallen,  but  that 
they  have  absolutely  increased  prices  in  consequence  of  their 
formation  and  apart  from  the  course  of  the  market  is  untrue. 
Whatever  evil  may  result  from  the  trust  system  in  the  sense  of 
swelling  the  profits  of  billionaires  at  the  cost  of  the  community, 
is  the  fault  not  of  the  capitalists,  but  of  the  people,  and  is  the 
result  of  the  prohibitive  tariffs  which  protect  the  internal  com- 
binations from  external  competition.  Abetter  illustration  of  the 
fact  that  the  law  of  economy  is  the  main  factor  in  the  development 
of  the  trusts  has  perhaps  never  been  given  than  that  which  may 
be  quoted  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Charles  M.  Schwab,  the  President 
of  theUnited  States  Steel  Corporation  itself:  “The  Metropolitan 
Street  Railway  Company  of  New  York  City  acquired  eighteen 
distinct  lines,  each  supporting  a full  complement  of  officers. 
The  lines  were  consolidated,  the  officers  wiped  out.  Mr.  H.  H. 
Vreeland  was  made  president  of  the  combined  system.  He 
performs  all  the  duties  that  formerly  fell  to  the  eighteen  separate 
presidents,  and  being  a high-grade  specialist  performs  them  very 
much  better.  The  improved  street-car  service  of  the  metrop- 
olis bears  eloquent  testimony  to  this.  Eighteen  vice-presidents 
and  secretaries  and  treasurers  have  given  place  to  one  official  of 
the  same  rank  under  the  combination,  and  so  the  process  has 
been  carried  out  all  along  the  line.” 

The  significance  of  the  Billion  Dollar  Trust  lies  in  the  fact 
that  it  is  a combination  of  combinations,  and  carries  the  sys- 
tem of  industrial  coalition  almost  to  the  extreme  point  short  of 
an  absolutely  Continental  monopoly  of  the  fundamental  indus- 
tries of  modern  manufacture.  The  results  of  the  formidable 
methods  that  some  endeavour  has  been  made  to  analyse  have 
been  a topic  for  the  exultation  of  America  and  the  despond- 
ency of  Europe  during  the  last  twelve  months,  and  in  one  sense 


are  too  familiar  for  elaborate  recapitulation.  We  know  that 
America  has  taken  the  place  held  by  ourselves  for  a century 
and  a half,  and  has  become  the  greatest  exporting  nation. 
From  1879  to  1895  the  outward  trade  of  the  United  States 
showed  practically  no  expansive  force.  In  the  latter  year  it 
commenced  one  of  the  most  astonishing  movements  in  the 
records  of  commerce.  American  exports  increased  in  the  period 
1 895— 1 9°°  from  $793,000,000  to  $1 ,370,000,000,  or  from  £165,- 
000,000  to  £295,000,000.  This  means  an  increase  of  almost  80 
per  cent.,  and  represents  a balance  of  exports  over  imports  as 
unparalleled  as  our  surplus  of  imports  over  exports.  Many 
Transatlantic  enthusiasts,  embracing  the  crudest  of  economic 
fallacies,  have  jumped  from  these  facts  to  the  conclusion  that 
America  has  been  rapidly  approaching  financial,  while  achiev- 
ing productive  supremacy.  Here,  of  course,  we  are  in  a world 
of  inference  and  theory  where  no  adequate  data  exist  for  a cer- 
tain judgment.  But  everything  suggests  that  America  has  been 
accumulating  capital  far  more  rapidly  than  any  other  country. 
For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  United  States  the  loans  of 
foreign  Governments  have  been  taken  up  upon  the  New  York 
market.  England,  Germany,  Russia  have  borrowed  American 
money  within  the  last  couple  of  years.  A large  amount  of 
European  capital  has  been  withdrawn  from  the  United  States. 
The  latter  have  bought  back  their  own  securities.  Upon  these 
points,  unfortunately,  our  information  has  none  of  the  sweet 
simplicity  of  Board  of  Trade  returns.  But  in  a period  of  univer- 
sal prosperity  in  trade  America  has  shared  to  a larger  degree 
than  ever  before  in  the  general  good  fortune,  and  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  she  has  struck  the  path  towards  financial  suprem- 
acy, whatever  distance  may  be  shown  to  separate  her  at  present 
from  that  goal.  The  McKinley  tariff  and  the  free  silver  craze 


18 


V 


seem  already  to  belong  to  another  age.  America,  in  a word, 
has  passed  through  her  growing  time.  She  is  entering  upon  her 
strength.  We  cannot  peer  into  the  book  of  the  future,  and  the 
prospects  of  the  Republic  are  not  wholly  divested  from  doubt. 
That  trade  unionism  of  a powerful  and  determined  type  will  be 
an  inevitable  development  across  the  Atlantic  most  observers 
are  convinced,  and  if  labour  is  repeatedly  worsted  by  the  giant 
trusts,  as  will  probably  be  the  case,  the  result  would  be  to 
transfer  the  battle  to  the  ballot-box,  and  to  make  Socialism  the  l/' 
supreme  issue  in  American  life. 

The  greatest  danger  of  trusts  upon  the  Continental  scale  is 
that  they  are  only  a step  removed  from  State  monopoly.  But 
these  are  long  views,  and  in  Anglo-Saxon  countries  nothing  is 
ever  pushed  to  its  logical  conclusion.  For  purposes  of  the 
practicable  future  the  troubles  of  America,  whether  in  industry  or 
politics,  are  unlikely  to  be  worse  than  those  with  which  her 
competitors  in  the  Old  World  are  afflicted,  while  her  enormous 
natural  advantages  will  remain  her  own.  The  main  points, 
then,  in  Mr.  McKinley’s  Buffalo  programme  are  reciprocal  tariffs, 
the  inter-ocean  canal  and  the  revival  of  the  American  mercan- 
tile marine  at  a cost  in  subsidies  estimated  to  be  at  least  $9,000,-  ]/ 

000  annually.  That  all  three  proposals  will  be  executed  is  as 
certain  as  anything  need  be.  The  “ Morganeering  ” of  the 
Leyland  line  was  an  unmistakable  index  fact.  The  American 
business  mind  thinks  in  terms  of  continents,  and  is  capable  not 
only  of  tactics  but  of  strategy.  It  is  the  period  of  commercial 
strategy,  as  Germany  has  been  quick  to  realise,  that  is  about  to 
begin.  The  fight  of  the  future  will  be  for  the  control  of  com- 
plete lines  of  traffic  round  the  globe.  America’s  internal  dis-  I 
tributing  system  is  already  incomparably  the  most  efficient  in 
existence.  For  purposes  of  foreign  trade  she  does  not  possess 


19 


a distributing  system  of  her  own:  This  is  a want  that  ortly  the 
revival  of  her  merchant  navy  can  supply,  and  when  her  steam- 
ship lines  are  added  to  her  railways  the  greatest  productiv^force 
the  world  has  ever  seen  will  tend  to  supplement  itself  by  the 
most  extensive  distributing  agency.  This  will  form,  sodijer  or 
later,  a commercial  problem  compared  with  which  every'other 
that  may  confront  us  will  sink  into  insignificance.  There  will 
be  time  to  face  it  as  it  develops.  Meanwhile  the  certainty  that 
European  convulsions  would  transfer  European  trade  to  the 
United  States  promises  to  be  the  greatest  of  all  guarantees  of 
international  peace.  So  far  as  we  are  concerned,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  marvellous  progress  of  America  in  her  growing  time 
has  not  involved  the  faintest  injury  to  British  trade  or  pre- 
vented us  from  enjoying  the  fullest  measure  of  prosperity  we 
have  experienced.  Our  exports  to  the  universal  producer  have 
shown  a more  marked  recovery  than  those  of  Germany,  and 
under  the  reciprocal  system  we  should  be  the  first  to  benefit, 
If  the  laws  of  Nature  forbid  us  to  hope  that  we  can  retard  that 
extension  of  productive  pre-eminence  which  America  has  already 
won,  she  will  continue  to  supply  us  with  the  food  and  raw 
material  which  will  enable  us  to  sustain  the  economic  struggle 
with  the  remainder  of  the  world  as  long  as  there  is  need  to 
count. 


1 


20 


